Live imaging combined with the power of mouse genetics represents the essential next step forward towards unraveling the mechanisms regulating mammalian embryonic development. Our research program is committed to exploiting imaging methods in mammalian systems. Our ongoing and proposed experiments address not only how local interactions between cells and its immediate neighbors give rise to an emergent, higher-level of organization, but also how this process is regulated mechanistically by specific genes or gene networks. Our approach synergizes the fields of cell, developmental and computational biology. The long-term goal of this project is to elucidate the cell behaviors, lineage relationships and molecular mechanisms regulating gastrulation in mammals, using the mouse as an experimentaly tractable model. An immediate goal is to provide a detailed picture of the dynamic events operating within the primitive streak and emergent mesoderm. Specifically, we are focusing on one mesoderm subtype, the paraxial mesoderm, which gives rise to morphologically-distinct somites through a reiterative evolutionarily-conserved process amenable to genetic dissection. Despite extensive genetic analysis, the cellular dynamics underlying the morphogenesis of paraxial mesoderm, the tissue that gives rise to axial musculature of the body, are complex and not well understood. We hypothesize that the specification, proliferation and patterning of the paraxial mesoderm involves a carefully orchestrated stereotypical sequence of cell behaviors. Using live imaging combined with genetic labeling and the analysis of mutants which disrupt this process to varying degrees, we have begun to investigate the cell dynamics driving paraxial mesoderm specification and morphogenesis in the early postimplantation mouse embryo. Our observations have already revealed unexpected cell behaviors and challenged established lineage relationships. This line of research will be further explored in the three Specific Aims that constitute this proposal. In Specific Aim 1 we investigate the fate of cells emerging from the mouse primitive streak. Using genetic inducible and photomodulatable fate mapping approaches, we will determine the fate of cells of the primitive streak, investigate the existence of a bipotential mesendoderm progenitor population, confirm the presence and identify the location of self-renewing paraxial mesoderm progenitors. In Specific Aim 2 we will define the cell behaviors at the primitive streak leading to emergence of mesoderm. Live imaging and a panel of novel reporter strains represent a unique platform developed by our laboratory for acquiring quantitative information on cellular dynamics in mouse embryos. We will use these tools to define the cell behaviors (for example, movement and division) integral to the emergence of mesoderm. Then, we will test how these are misregulated in mutants affecting mesoderm formation. In Specific Aim 3 we will define the cell behaviors operating within the paraxial mesoderm leading to somitogenesis. Using live imaging, we will determine the cell dynamics coincident with somite formation, and test how this morphogenetic process is misregulated at a cellular level in mutants.